


By Any Other Name

by SimplexityJane



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, My attempt to justify D&D's nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2019-01-06 12:27:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12211281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SimplexityJane/pseuds/SimplexityJane
Summary: Visenya or Aemon.But they lost the war, and they butchered a baby who would not have been king, and knight though he was, Aemon was never a conqueror.Or, the story of how Lyanna Stark came to name her son Aegon Targaryen.





	By Any Other Name

**Author's Note:**

> Let me just say: his name is Aemon in the books. Like, ninety+ percent sure that passage that ends in "but he was not Aemon Targaryen" is foreshadowing of the highest order of Jon Snow actually being Aemon Targaryen. There's a possibility he's actually Aegon, but since they've already got a character hiding under a different name who is called Aegon Targaryen, I highly doubt it. Not even Martin would confuse us that much. 
> 
> But this idea would not leave me alone, and here we go. I'm mixing show and book here, so there is an annulment, not a polygamous second marriage.

“What shall we name him?” Lyanna asked, stretched on her back, basking in her nakedness. Even in the water-warmed halls of Winterfell, this would be uncomfortable. _Take me somewhere warm. I will not melt_ , she remembered saying. Rhaegar had given her this tower in Dorne, with its sunbaked bricks and heated winds. She would see the sea next, she decided. She had been in White Harbor once, to meet one of the Manderly boys about a possible betrothal, but she had been five and could not remember the sea.

It would be spectacular, to see the sea with someone she loved by her side.

Rhaegar’s head landed on her belly, lips cool there, and Lyanna giggled. She had never been one for giggling as a girl, always too busy getting into trouble, and it was freeing, laughter like this. She carded a hand through Rhaegar’s silver hair. It tangled near as bad as hers after lovemaking. Their child was going to have a hell of a time keeping up with his hair.

“Well, what do you think?” Rhaegar asked. For a moment she thought he addressed her belly, still flat and taut with muscle. Then he looked up, those near-black indigo eyes catching her as surely as they had the first time, at Harrenhal with her up a tree and half-stripped of armor. _I will never grow used to those eyes_. “In truth, I can only think of a few names untarnished by family history, and none of them seem to fit. Perhaps Visenya for a girl, in honor of another warrior queen.”

“Ever my poet,” Lyanna murmured. “Visenya for a girl, then.” She thought of all the Targaryen names she’d known. He was right. So few were held by those worthy of them, and so many of them had died by their House words. She did not want that sort of future for her son. “Perhaps Jaehaerys, for the Conciliator. Or Aemon, after your uncle at the Wall.” And the Dragonknight, but the old maester had written to Rhaegar concerning his plans, both regarding the realm and herself. He had not judged them for what they were going to do. That meant more than he knew.

“Not Jaehaerys.” Rhaegar’s eyes blazed with something bitter. “He married his sister and forced my parents to wed, and though I understand it, I cannot help hating him for harming them so.”

Lyanna touched his face, and the anger faded. He kissed her wrist, looking as awe-inspired as he had every time they kissed, as grateful for this little affection she offered as if it were a kingdom.

“Aemon,” she said. “For a scholar and a knight.”

“Aemon Targaryen, first of his name. Aye, I think we’ve decided. Visenya or Aemon, little one.” He blew a raspberry on her belly, and she screeched. She hit him with the feather-stuffed pillow, and they quickly devolved into childish playing.

Long after their lovemaking ended, Lyanna thought over the future her son would have.

_Dorne will secede, but their army is small and used to fighting wars in their land, and they have never been accepted by the Seven Kingdoms. The North is bound to me, the Riverlands to Brandon when he marries his Tully. The Reach hates Dorne far more than any of the other kingdoms, and the Vale rarely fights offensive wars._

The problems were the Westerlands and the Stormlands. She had been betrothed to Robert Baratheon against her will, but he would never see it that way. He believed himself entitled to the best of everything, especially women, and he had set his sights on her. If he went to war, he could sway the Lannisters to his cause by promising them a throne through the daughter, Cersei.

She put it out of her mind. She would never sleep if she thought like this, and she needed her strength.

Of course, it didn’t happen like that at all. No one believed Benjen when he said that Lyanna ran away, and Brandon ran off to King’s Landing demanding his goodbrother’s head. The Mad King locked him away and summoned Rickard Stark to his death, and just like that, Lyanna was an orphan. Her poet husband refused to join a rebellion against his father, and she spit and clawed at him when he tried to tell her goodbye.

She was locked away in a tower in Dorne, and by the end of her time there she hated her husband more than Robert Baratheon ever could have. She hated a dead man, and it gave her strength to go on when nothing else would.

Robert would be king, and he would kill her son.

The news came on dark wings, bearing the darkest words of all. Elia and her children, brutalized and murdered. Little Aegon thrown against a wall, Rhaenys pierced through half a dozen times with a sword. Lyanna could not keep down her dinner that night.

 _They were innocent_. It pounded through her head, chasing her through her nights of sleepless torture. _I did this, I and Rhaegar and the Mad King and Tywin_ fucking _Lannister_.

And she could no longer think of her child as Aemon Targaryen.

 _Bring them fire, my son, and bring them blood_. It was a prayer to all the gods she knew. She said it before the fire, hoping the gods of Valyria would hear her and save their son. _Bring them death and destruction and ruin, and out of it, bring yourself to that bloody chair Rhaegar wanted to dismantle with my help, and sit down on it. Be Aegon the Conqueror that you might avenge Aegon the Slain._

She had no maester, just her handmaidens and herself. As the hours wore on she realized that something was terribly wrong, and her son was born backwards into the world, as if he wanted to stay safe with her forever. But she could not protect him. No one could protect anyone.

“Bring him to me,” she commanded Wylla, her very best friend among the girls. She was presented with a child whose hair was already dark, eyes closed. It would take months for them to darken to whatever color they may be, Rhaegar’s or her own. “Hello, Aegon.”

Her son did not respond, but she hadn’t expected him to.

She did not know how long it was, but it was a very short time before she saw Ned, all the baby fat melted off his face, hair near as long as Father’s. He was alone, thank all the gods. She did not know what she would have done had others found her.

She was dying, and she did not want to die. But her son was alive, and he had a father. Ned had _promised_.

It was all she could hope for, in this ash and ruin she had caused.

She died with a smile on her lips.


End file.
